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Problems without Passports - Bono Interview
 You've been hammering away at this administration pretty much since they came into power to persuade them that Africa matters. Which arguments do you find work best with them?
Oh well I have access to President Clinton's White House, I had a friendship and knowing him before he went into office, it was very informal. That was good for me. When President Bush tool office he at first wouldn't see me. In fact even his Sec of the Treasury wouldn't see me. He was going to run a much more formal operation and I realised that we were going to have to put on a suit and tie if we were going to get in. And a suit and tie in many different ways. We opened an office in DC, we brought in some serious people to man that office. Bill Gates gave us money, George Sars gave us money, Ed Scott another Dot com wealthy man gave us money. When in the door after looking at me like an exotic plant for some period, I think the arguments that struck home with the administration, particularly with pres Bush were the idea that he could so to speak reinvent the concept of foreign assistance. I think that as it stood he wasn't interested. The cliché was that the money was going down a rat hole. No matter how many pictures of waterholes I took with me to Capitol Hill it was clear that there was a credibility problem on the whole area of foreign assistance and indeed on a table of 22 donors, the US was 22nd at 0.1% GDP whereas Brit and Ireland are 0.34 etc so they were way down the list and I could see the problems were critical. Pres Bush I think had his motivations sparked by some of the Church people that he was around, I think he also had a sense of, he had real personal convictions that his moment, his tenure would be remembered by the way he did or didn't deal with the AIDS pandemic. He could see that the history books were watching but the concept he still needed a new solution. SO we helped, he worked with Pres Bush on an idea that has since been called the Millennium Challenge Account where we routed the old argument that corruption was siphoning off all of the funds by saying look we can show you good governance and if we can show you good governance where there is a clear and transparent process will you increase aid there. They finally said yes. The trip I took with Sec O'Neil was in a way to find those exceptions as they put it to this rule of African mess. But I think to try and answer your question a little more succinctly I think that Pres Bush could spot that the greatest health crisis in the history of the world in 600 ys since the Bubonic Plague was happening on his watch and he would be judged by history by how he did or didn't deal with it and secondly Pres Bush figured that if he could re-describe aid as investment he would get a lot more cover from his conservatives, from the right.
Among others things a huge amount of money put into fighting AIDS, are you convinced by that because there are questions being asked, about the man appointed to run it and about the way the money has been dribbling out?
Well they are niggles. The money is substantial. It is an extraordinary amount of cash to have committed, but the thing that was in a way more extraordinary than the cash was to hear Pres, a Republican Pres of the US put AIDS in African 3rd on the bill on the State of the Union speech in wartime. That was really remarkable and although they called me 3 times during the day I still didn't believe until I actually saw it come out of his mouth. That was the real moment because he was nailing his colours to the mask. The shock for a European to discover about America is that the Pres isn't the most important person. It was a shock for me working with Clinton on Debt Cancellation. I thought that 23 countries with their Debt Council wow, we've cracked it then you find out not at all. The president writes the cheque but it's Congress who decides whether to cash the cheque or not. Congress is the most important person in the American bodied politic and now whilst Pres Bush is in Africa his more than a potential embarrassment, this would make a folly of his visit. I don't think it's going to happen, I think he will fight for the money. But it's going to be a very tough fight.
You talk about the domestic political factors and monetary issues that influence a decision like that but as a matter of principal how much do you think it matters how much a programme like the AIDS programme is done unilaterally as opposed to multi-laterally?
Well we have worked very hard to convince this administration in the US that the AIDS component of their development policy should be as multi-lateral as possible. This is hard with their present stance, hard for them to hear, but actually it makes the most sense. It's economies of scale. You can't have the 15 wealthiest countries in the world trampling over each other trying to…repeating each other's tasks and programmes and stepping on each other's toes. It's not smart and if value for money is the thing that seems to impress and administration the most, surely for instance, the global health fund for TBA Malaria, is something that they should be interested in. It has a 6% overhead, which is remarkable. Over that overhead they have to pay for auditing in the regions where the money will be spent. …Kenedy Crowey's, PWC these kinds of people to make sure that every penny s spent well. This is how a multi-lateral institution implemented by Koffi Annan and the UN should be doing things and we should be supporting them.
Do you think the UN is the right body, will come up with the most multi-lateral way to do it?
The UN has many things to be proud of, one f them is the setting up of the Global Health Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria. It has some things that it needs to rethink. The bureaucracy is too big. In a funny way the decision to route so much money through the Global Health Fund says a lot about UN aids, if you want to look at it like that so…If the UN didn't exist, we'd have to invent it, it's crucial that there is an institution overseeing the kind of tangle of relationships that is modern diplomacy, and indeed the malaise of poverty and illness that affects so much of the world's population. With the benefits of Globalisation come some responsibilities. A global mechanism like the UN would have to be invented if it didn't already exist.
To what extent during your work in Washington have you found your cases damaged by the US particularly in the light of what happened over Iraq?
Something was burning. There was a bit of a stink. From the very first moment I arrived in Washington there ahs always been an atmosphere for the UN. Its not just in DC it's in America, it's in new York where the UN is housed, where New Yorkers don't fully understand what is going on in that building. Oddly enough considering it's in their country they don't seem to feel any kind of ownership and co-ownership and it's always confused me. I think to understand it you have to understand the American mind; the differences between say the academic and the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur deploys democracy. The academic works with it. The European approach to development issues has always you know had a relationship, even if it was uncomfortable, with bureaucracy it knew it always had. It has always been mechanistic. In America there is a distrust for bureaucracy full-stop. There's distrust for government full stop. They are all about the individual. Where I think the UN has failed, I think they have thus far before Kofi Annan, they hadn't a clear enough melody line if you like for people to follow. It was like what's going on over there, what are they at? It looks like the set to star trek. Who are these people in colourful costumes parking their diplomatic plates on our side walk. They didn't understand that actually the UN was keeping the peace that they were having such prosperity in. And I think Kofi has managed to make up some lost ground but there was the travesty of Rwanda way before the problems of Iraq. There was the prevarication of Bosnia. Now the UN did great in Kosovo but he has a lot of ground to make up. It's not that the structure to me is the problem. It's more the ability to communicate what it is about to every day citizens.
But in terms of selling your message both in the White House and on Capitol Hill have you found it that much more difficult since the Gulf crisis? There's no doubt that the Americans are more sceptical as a result of the failure of the UN during that.
Yes is of course the answer but what I would more disturbingly suggest is that they had a low opinion before Iraq of the Un and what happened over Iraq confirmed their worst suspicions, would be my impressions of the way conservatives in the US observed this apparatus. The only thing to upset the argument was the figure of Kofi Annan. He is the very embodiment of reason I think it appears to most Americans and his measuredness they utterly utterly respect so I think that as he remakes the UN in his image, I think the Americans will take it more and more seriously. Because Kofi Annan is as annoyed by the bureaucracy of the Un as I think the most ardently right ring critics of it.
What about the broader political conflicts of it? Especially post Iraq war. When you've got a huge crisis like that, does it suck up the political attention and detract or take it away from Africa?
We were very nervous post 9.11 that we could get any momentum on Africa but we turned out to be completely wrong. It came out of a conversation I had with a senior white house official who confessed to me that yes there were potentially another 10 Afghanistans in Africa so suddenly we could make the argument, Look, it's cheaper to prevent the fires than to put them out. We started to describe what the US had done post World War 2 with the Marshall Plan, not just liberating Europe but rebuilding Europe as a bow-work against sovietism in the Cold War. We started using that as an analogy of what they have to do in the "Hot War" if you like. That they have to help rebuild Africa as the bow-work against extremism and this argument has more and more gained credibility although people will say it's wealthy Saudis who perpetrated 9.11 and we will always say that's true but they found secure and sanctity in the corrupt state that was Afghanistan and as one senior White House Official revealed to me, they know there is potentially another 10 of those in Africa so we started to actually get more heat rather than less and at first Pres Bush's administration looked down on the idea of poverty as one of the causes of terrorism; it was the middle east problem. They less and less take that position. Colin Powell really helped us there.
It's interested that you feel that message is getting through because, never mind in Africa, people look at what has happened in Afghanistan and Iraq and say the Bush Administration hasn't really got the point about rebuilding nations and preventing these places becoming another swamp for breeding terrorism.
Well that is our work and I would say we are having some success and I don't think that Pres Bush would be in the US this week did he not believe that actually some degree of nation building would be necessary if the brand USA is not to be completely tarnished
Just to put you out, you said "in the US this week" and I assume that you meant would be in "Africa this week".
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I don't think Pres Bush would have made a trip to Africa if he didn't believe that Brand USA was not to be completely tarnished. And Brand USA is another of the arguments that we use. If the US was to be run like a company and I think it is, wouldn't you be calling in your regional brand managers at this point and saying post 9.11, post the shock of the attack on the Pentagon and the Trade Centre, but more importantly, post the pictures of people jumping up and down on the flag to celebrate the Twin Towers turning to dust, post all of that, wouldn't you be brining in your regional brand managers and say Why? How has this happened to us? We liberated Europed, we heped rebuild Europe so the brand USA is another argument we used because it was never shinier, Brand USA, than after World War 2 with the Marshall Plan which cost 1% GDP over 4/5 years. They are down at 0.1% right now. So in terms of if you look as just a CBO and this is the NBA president he must be realising that if you want to brand to have that shine off it, the reason why Irish people, my father, looked to the US as if he were American was largely to do with this kind of spirit, this was the spirit of America, you know written on the statue of liberty there's send me your tired and huddled masses. These poverty issues, people look at you like you're some sort of pinko and sometimes when you bring them up, they are written into the very heart of the country, the constitution the liberty Bell in Philadelphia, I've read all these, I'm like one those annoying fans, you know the ones that read the CV for notes, I'm always reminding America about what they stand for, I'm just amazed they get away with it. What they stand on, rather than what they stand for I should say.
So the UN are looking ahead, do you think it's possible for Africa to continue, to begin to get the kind of focus it needs when it has no real structural power within the UN? I mean there are obviously no government members in the Security Council for example. Is it possible for Africa to get the focus of attention it needs within the UN without having any sort of formal representation on the Sec council?
Well it's very interesting if you look at the international Monetary Fund and the World Bank and you look at African representation there I think it's about 5%. The wealthy countries are 60% of the decision making process of these 2 giant financial mechanisms. They are marfginalised to 5% to the countries that need this money the most, 5% is all the influence they have. At least in the UN I think it's probably…I'm just trying to think…you have this anomally to the critics of the UN but to me just the most sensible procedure where people have an eqyuzl voice, including what we saw during Iraq which is what was so infuriating to the US was Cameroon and Senegal and Guinea who were sitting there on the Council. To me that was just a miracle of democracy, to some people, they just want to pull their hair out. I just thought isn't this the design of the UN whereby at a certain point the Superstate has to humble itself to the nearly estate.
You sound quite optimistic both about making America care about African and about the future of the UN.
Well we are fucked if the UN is…The UN better work or we're all in trouble. I think it was just on nose of the 30s the last time there were rows about this kind of multilateral institution, then it was the league of nations and what was coming was the rise of fascism and a word ripped by war and genocidal hatreds. We shouldn't forget why the UN was invented. Does it need reform? Yes. I'm not an expert; I just know that never before have we needed it, just from my own point of view from dealing with the AIDS pandemic just as one thing, or the reform of the international financial institutions which also needs to happen. The voice of the UN as a voice of reason, I have never needed to hear it more. Am I optimistic about America? I'll tell you why I am. I went on a tour of the Mid West because in DC politicians had told us this is not anywhere near what's on the heart of most Americans. In the Mid-West they don't even know where Africa is. We went to the Mid-West, we toured colleges, churches, truck-stops, Dairy Queens, we went everywhere. The opposite turned out to be true. There was a certain moral compass in the middle of America I discovered and it sets the course for everyone else. And it's that decency that you find in Americans, that yes sir, no sir, kind of decency where if they see their neighbour in trouble they go to their aid. They felt more American the more they started talking about Africa and going to its aid. It's a strange thing we started to realise that Americans feel patriotic when you remind them of their constitution and the high ideas at the heart of, in the head and the mind of the idea of America. It's one of the few countries that is an idea. It's not just a country, it's an idea. And that idea I would suggest is under as much attack as the actual country itself.
Can I finally ask you about what you said on the assumption that things don't turn out as optimistically as you think they may, you talked in terms of people engaging in civil disobedience if their governments don't come up to the mark. What do you mean by that?
Well, I fell that I've taken a few risks with just being involved in such un-hip work and being a singer in a band but more importantly what's at risk is the people I represent, their credibility; student activists that can't get into Number 10, people who, NGOs, who see the raw suffering and the wanton waste of life of seeing 15,000 people die every day in Africa for preventable treatable diseases. At a certain point if the rhetoric and dialogue doesn't work I think you have to start banging a little bit more than the dustbin lids. This to me is part of the journey of equality. There was a point when it was preposterous to have women voting, there was a point where to have desegregated schools in the southern states of the US was absurd. It cost a lot of people. People had to put themselves out to drag these absurdities into the daylight of what it means to actually believe in equality. And finally now an accident of latitude and longitude we must not accept as a reason for whether your child lives or dies and I am prepared to work on that as hard as people did in the civil rights movement, in the 50s and 60s, because that's what it is for me, it's not just civil rights, it's human rights, the right to live like a human is at the heart of this. The next jump that we are about to make in the journey of equality. That's what's involved and civil disobedience has played a noble part in the journey of equality whether it was custard pies, people tying themselves to railings, breaking the law. There is no law to me as important as the value of human lives and I think we are breaking a universal law right now. We are complicit by our inaction and the law that we are breaking is this idea that human life is sacred and that people no matter what they look like or where they live are equal to us.
Thank you, very much.
I don't know if we can push you slightly more on the unilateral, multilateral argument whether in your campaign work do you have to make that judgement. Is it going to be more beneficial to stay outside the UN...
I certainly did, I did make that decision. Did I not say Lucy that it was striking that in one sense it was taking money away from UN Aides?
Yes...
Ok
Is there an advantage to an extent sometimes of people like yourself being voices that operate outside the UN and indeed sometimes of individual organisations being better able to deal with a particular crisis if they are not involved in the UN bureaucracy?
Well I like to think I work in and out of the UN and DATA the organisation that I represent, we live off some of the statistics provided by let's say the UN DP's report, that's a bible for us because it gives us the facts so that when I rant I have something to go on. I think the world needs both and without the UN, without Kofi Annan and people like Mark Mallet-Brown saying you have an open door at any time Bono, I wouldn't have the same intelligence. You need to know what's happening on the ground. You need that massive cover that the UN brings you, not just in terms of its statistical analysis but then finally actual real cover when you describe a problem.
What do you make of the thinking behind Kofi Annan's decision to take the handling of the AIDS crisis to an extent outside the UN framework?
It was striking for KA to first call for a global health fund to fight TB, AIDS and Malaria and then to say he didn't want it under the osposis of the UN offices and I thought maybe that was a clue to the future. He is very proud of what the UN Aides are doing but I think he realised that with certain massive problems the UN will more be the light source than the air-conditioning, the water, the electrical supply and I think that that is where the UN is going.
So it is still a multilateral operation but one that doesn't suffer from the bureaucracy and the top heavy nature of the UN?
Yeah I think that Kofi Annan, if he's let, will remake the UN, not just in his image, which would be very good because he is a man who doesn't like bureaucracy, but I think in the image of all reasonable people who have a stake in it.
Thank you.
It's one of those things where I can really see, I couldn't believe this UN and DP report at a first glance it looks quite good, they have these millennium goals by 2015 they will half global povery, fantastic idea, looked kind of idealistic and blah blah blah, but if you look at the world as a whole they are actually hitting a lot of those targets. Why? Because of India and China pulling themselves out of poverty. But when I looked at Africa, it's like 100 ys from now before they reach those targets. They are not just not hitting them; they are so way off them. And what's exciting about these issues and what's maddening about them is it's really doable. I mean if the US gave 0.7 which is what all of European countries have committed to over the next decade, that's an extra 60 bill a year. We are begging for 3 bill $ to fight AIDS at the moment in Congress. But Kofi doesn't pretend that there is 60 bill between where the US is at with their commitment of GDP and where the rest of the world is going. You know what it is going to take? 50c out of every 100$and you could actually eradicate the kind of abject poverty that we are talking about.
Doesn't the Marshall Plan argument slightly fall down in the sense that in Europe you were dealing with an economic structure that was kind of there already?
Yes, we just use that as a type of sales pitch. It's a little corny but you are absolutely right. The thing I'm trying to do now is to say this is the only generation that actually could afford to eradicate that sort of poverty. Because with India and China, the amount would have been 3 or 4 times the amount it is now. So this is the first generation and it will cost them 50c out of every 100$ and if we can make that a political reality we can certainly give Africa the chance to reform itself. Corruption, all of that kind of stuff a precondition on getting these breaks.
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